Society and the World

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

But at my back from time to time I hear 3 The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law.

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

Still falls the Rain— Dark as the world of man, black as our loss— Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.

“Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy And the dogs that talk revolution, Drunk with talk, liars and believers. I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,” Said the gamey black-maned wild boar Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.

If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

Who will remember, passing through this gate, The unheroic dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate— Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Who will remember, passing through this gate, The unheroic dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate— Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land.

With Usura With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting.

With Usura With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting.

No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.

No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.

There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization. Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.

Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later… some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some, pro patria, walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men’s lies, the unbelieving came home, home to a lie.